


The Way Our Horizons Meet

by loveyoushall (iknowhowyoukiss)



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Banter, Canon Compliant, F/M, Pining, UST, do i still have to tag for tros spoilers??, jumping headfirst into the damerey trashcan LYKE, missing moment, my holy grails of writing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-14
Updated: 2020-04-14
Packaged: 2021-03-02 05:02:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,616
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23649637
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/iknowhowyoukiss/pseuds/loveyoushall
Summary: She’d been expecting another dispute, they seem to have a knack for them, after all, always butting heads to Finn's exasperation and General Organa’s endless amusement. But this? This strangely subdued version of Poe and the deviation from their usual squabbling? It tilts her acutely off balance, because if there’s one thing Commander Dameron’s always been, it’s unapologetic about his opinions, no matter how passionate (aggressive) they tend to be. (aka In which Rey and Poe share a quiet moment after their fight in TROS.)
Relationships: Poe Dameron & Rey, Poe Dameron/Rey
Comments: 12
Kudos: 73





	The Way Our Horizons Meet

**Author's Note:**

> I jumped headfirst into this ship a few weeks ago after I'd finally gotten around to watching the Sequel Trilogy, and knowing me, I figured I'd end up exactly here sooner than later LOL So this is me tossing in my humble little first offering of Damerey fic <3

Rey stomps her way up the boarding ramp of Han’s ship, mentally reciting a list of the damages Chewie had gone over with her earlier, and feeling her irritation spark with every item she ticks off. As she continues to make her way towards the cockpit, she can feel her temper hand-in-hand with the Force, pinpricks of energy dancing along her skin and dying to be released on some poor, unsuspecting part or crate that may happen to unluckily find itself in her path. 

But the Falcon’s seen enough damages for today and she refuses to be the reason it receives any more. 

Lightspeed skipping. _Gods!_ Did he have to be so stubborn? Did he have to be so _reckless_ ? She _told_ him to be careful, she _warned_ him not to be rash. In fact, this is the last time she lets him fly it -- no, _near_ it -- _ever_ again, she vows silently to herself.

_Lightspeed! Skipping!_

Rey scoffs at that final internal outburst, huffing as she plops into the pilot’s seat and feeling her shoulders sag under the weight of the morning. The peace that being here normally brings her is short-lived, eclipsed by several things taking up space in her mind: Being unable to complete the training course. The stupid fight. The state of Han’s beloved ship. 

Of the three, the argument is the one that continues to sit heavily at the forefront of her thoughts. All because of him.

_Poe Dameron._

It’s easy enough to conjure an image of Leia’s most daring pilot in her head. She’s never been around someone like him before, his face is...all sharp lines and angles. Dark, broody eyes and even darker hair. A shadow of scruff perpetually covering his jaw. He has two dents on either side of his mouth, dimples that have deepened into creases with time. 

She has them, too, the dimples. She likes hers. She might like his as well if she weren’t so exasperated with him.

Rey slouches down, hips scooting forward in her chair. Her mood is souring again and it makes her sigh. She props her elbow onto the armrest, rubbing absentmindedly at her lips with her fingers as the mouth in her vision begins to move.

_You’re the best fighter we have. We need you. Out there, not here._

Another heavy breath expels between her lips and she crosses her arms over her chest while continuing to glower at nothing. She will never understand why all the girls on base say the things they do about him. He may be charming and his face pleasant enough -- not that she had noticed either of those things or even felt them to be true, of course not, it was just one of the things _they_ said (and often) -- but being charismatic and handsome do not negate the fact that he is a goddamn pain in the ass. 

Oh and what a pain he is. _Arrogant, insufferable, irresponsible, negligent, and- and...and his nose is too big and-_

Something shimmers on the edges of her consciousness, drawing her attention away from her spiraling rant. It’s a tiny shift in the Force, one that has become rather recognizable to her in the past year, comforting in its constancy even. Despite being as unwelcome as it is at the moment.

She turns her head to follow the feeling, just as Poe appears in the doorway and murmurs a soft, “Hey.”

Rey doesn’t reply, eyes roving across his face before meeting the deep brown of his own. Another flicker of annoyance works its way up her spine. _Definitely too big_ , she muses, frowning and turning her gaze away. _And he’s in need of a trim._

He hovers there for a bit longer then sighs and moves to sit in the seat behind her that he always takes up when they end up on the occasional mission together, the one diagonally to her right. 

“You know, you shouldn’t scowl. Your face could get stuck like that,” he says.

She catches just a hint of teasing in his tone and even though he can’t see her, she rolls her eyes in return, refusing to become victim to that infamous Dameron charm. “That’s ridiculous.”

Poe is silent for a beat and then, more seriously, “More or less ridiculous than my behavior earlier?”

“I haven’t decided yet.” 

“That’s fair,” he responds. 

The quiet that settles next is tense and full of the things that remain unsaid between them. 

Poe breathes deeply, a strong inhalation, and she hears rather than sees him scrub at his face with his hand. “Rey, I owe you an apology.”

Whatever it was she thought he would say next, it certainly hadn’t been _that_. She glances in his direction once more, feeling another tug at her senses. Rey persistently avoids eye contact, though, realizing that she is...unused to this. 

Perhaps she’d been expecting another dispute, they seem to have a knack for them, after all, always butting heads to Finn's exasperation and General Organa’s endless amusement. But this? This strangely subdued version of Poe and the deviation from their usual squabbling? It tilts her acutely off balance, because if there’s one thing Commander Dameron’s always been, it’s unapologetic about his opinions, no matter how passionate (aggressive) they tend to be. 

He does mean the apology, however, she can tell by the sincerity in his voice, and she has to admit that despite being in new, unfamiliar territory, it’s sort of nice seeing this honesty and humility out of him.

But if he thinks she’s going to give him a free pass for lightspeed skipping the Falcon with a broken compressor, he’s got another thing coming. 

“For what?” she snaps irritably, even as she begins to feel herself softening towards him.

“Do you need me to spell it out or something?” His pitch is just a tinge on the side of biting, an unconscious reaction to her own sniping, she’s sure.

“You said you wanted to apologize; I just want to know what for,” Rey explains.

“For _earlier-_ ”

“What _about_ earlier?”

He heaves another sigh then catches her off guard when he chuckles gently. “Kriff, you sure know how to make it easy on somebody, don’t you?” 

His laugh is a surprisingly pleasant sound in the seclusion of the cockpit, but Rey frowns again at his words, her lingering annoyance deflating almost immediately, and this time when she turns a little further in her seat, she does look at him. 

“Poe, I...I don’t mean to be difficult,” she says, and she knows he understands she means more than just accepting his apology.

“I know you don’t,” he answers, tone low and resigned. 

Seeing him now and really _looking_ at him, she notices for the first time how unkempt he appears. Not just from the effects of a fight, she’s seen that before and him far worse for the wear; this is different. It’s as if the fatigue reaches to the very depths of him. 

His eyes are troubled and more than a little tired around the edges, hair sticking up every which way, undoubtedly due to restless fingers, and even his energy feels slightly off. Rey’s stomach abruptly twists with guilt. Whatever heaviness she carries for this cause is a mirror to his own; they’ve _all_ got stakes in this and it was wrong of her to forget that. 

She suddenly feels as exhausted as he looks.

“I’m sorry for being short with you,” he tells her, after the silence begins to ring.

“Yelling,” she interjects, but there’s no more heat behind the remark. “You were also yelling-”

“And I’m sorry for _yelling_ ,” he huffs quite dramatically, a smile tickling the corners of his mouth and soothing a bit of her frayed nerves.

“ _And?_ ” Rey arches an expectant brow at him. 

“ _And_ for lightspeed skipping the Falcon,” he grumbles, stringing the words close together with a hefty roll of his eyes.

“Forgiven.” Her lips curve up softly at him; if he can extend an olive branch, so can she. “I’m sorry as well.” 

“For?” he asks, without missing a beat.

She takes note of the gleam in his eyes and realizes too late that she should have known he wouldn’t be so easy with her either. “I should have been there today,” she replies.

“Mmhmm,” he nods, body visibly relaxing in his seat as he picks up his leg to rest his ankle over his knee. “You were also yelling, by the way.”

“I wasn’t yelling-”

“Oh, you were yelling-”

Her nose scrunches disdainfully at him. “I was...being firm. _Loudly._ there’s a difference!”

“Just admit you were yelling-”

“You...you are a difficult, _difficult-_ ”

“‘ _Man_ ,’” he finishes for her, shrugging his shoulders. “So you’ve said. But you were still yelling.”

“Oh, alright, alright! _Fine!_ ” She can’t help the laugh that escapes at his fast-paced retorts. Another Poe trait she is far too familiar with. “I apologize if you thought I was yelling.”

One of his brows lift at the twist of her words, amused smirk reaching all the way to his eyes, and just when she thinks he’s not going to let it go, “Alright, I accept.” 

“You’re so gracious, Commander,” she deadpans.

“I know.” 

Poe smiles again, an absolute scoundrel of a smile that tugs low and razor-sharp in her belly, and she suddenly can’t remember why she thinks all those girls on base are wrong about Poe Dameron and his never-ending charms, because she’s starting to suspect maybe, just maybe, they are very, very right. 

“ _And?_ ” he urges, drawing her from her introspection.

“What do you mean, ‘ _and?_ ’”

“ _And_ what else? You have one more thing to apologize for.”

Her brows pinch together. “I do not.”

“You do-”

“I do not-”

“Uh, Beebee-Ate? Or did you conveniently forget all about the tree you dropped on him?” 

She glares at him, at the way he so easily gets under her skin and the stupid sparkle in his eyes. “Oh, _fine_ ,” she mutters. “ _And_ I’m sorry for dropping a tree on Beebee-Ate.”

“Forgiven,” he echoes, then he slaps his hands on the armrests of his chair and pushes to his feet. “Now, come on. If you’re done moping, we’ve got to rally the troops for this debrief.”

“I wasn’t moping,” she starts to argue, following his lead and moving from the pilot’s seat, recognizing that they’ve fallen back into their normal state of bickering. It’s the lightest, not to mention the steadiest, she’s felt all day.

“You were moping.” He fixes her with another one of those grins, the very one that sends the base girls swooning. She’s never been the type, but in the privacy of her mind she can admit that if there was anyone who might get her to do it, he’d likely be the best bet. 

“Rey,” he says, hand reaching out and gently catching her arm as she passes him. 

She freezes slightly at the touch, her gaze drifting down to where his fingers curl just below the band around her bicep. This isn’t new, Poe’s always been a...physical sort of person -- hugs after missions, hands constantly brushing over people’s arms and shoulders, and giving companionable slaps to their backs -- but it _feels_ different. 

“I meant what I said,” Poe tells her as she finally looks at him. 

She wants to ask him what he’s referring to, but it’s hard to concentrate over the strange, warm hum of their contact, and then the words disappear completely when his eyes begin to trace over her face. Rey has a startling realization then -- he does this often, stares at her intently, almost like he’s searching for something. She wonders with an unexpected clench in her stomach if he’s ever found what he was looking for.

And then she’s wondering nothing at all, every thought slipping from her mind when his hand moves from her arm to hover over her cheek. Her body is traitorous, heat creeping along her spine, dancing up her neck to settle into her face. 

“Uh...Poe?” She is mortified to find that her voice sounds like a choked whisper.

“You’ve ah- you’ve got some grease on your um-” 

She slaps her hand to her face, rubbing furiously before he can touch her. “Oh! I was looking at the engines with Chewie- did I get it?”

“No, it’s right there-” He shakes his head, a little chuckle puffing out from between his lips while she continues to rub at random spots. “May I?” he asks after another few seconds of watching her struggle.

She pauses only because he’s looking at her again, in that quiet, contemplative way he has about him that perpetually sets her nerves on edge. She’s always felt so seen with Poe, not just for her Jedi abilities or Resistance efforts, but as just _Rey_. She nods her head slowly.

And then the air presses back into her lungs. 

He shuffles a little nearer into her space as his hand closes the gap to cup her face in his palm. It’s a whisper of a touch yet somehow it still manages to sear her skin even though she was expecting the contact. His thumb shifts across her cheek, deeper in pressure than the rest of his fingers as he swipes it over the spot she couldn’t find on her own. 

His eyes are laser focused on the task and she’s surprised to discover that with his nearness comes the astonishing revelation that those eyes are not as brown as they appear upon first glance. There, furthest from the pupils, just before the outer rim of his irises are flecks of richer brown, the color of warmed sugar. _Huh._ She’s not quite sure what to do with that new bit of information, so she tucks it away for later consideration. 

Poe squints slightly, the movement so small she wouldn’t have noticed it if they hadn’t been so close, and then his brows pinch together in deep concentration. The endearing little creases that form between them tug at her attention, and true to the infinite complexities of Poe Dameron, they somehow suit him in many ways and don’t in others. 

She wants to ask him if he’s always so serious, if even the littlest of tasks require ‘ _Commander Dameron_ ’ levels of focus and care. And had he always been that way, even before the Resistance? She’s really only known _this_ version of Poe, but there have been glimpses of something else in him, a freeness and a lightness she’s counted herself lucky to experience. It’s in the way he laughs every so often, throwing his head back with the glee of it, and in the times he trades jokes and gibes with Chewie and Finn, and how gentle he is with Beebee-Ate when he thinks no one is looking. Fleeting gems in the quiet moments between missions, sunrise meetings, and after-dinner drinks. 

It flashes into her so fast she doesn’t know if it’s Force-related or simply an overactive imagination. Dark, wild curls, longer than she’s ever seen on him, familiar stormy eyes, silver chain gleaming around his neck. He’s younger, as evident by the roundness of his face and the shallowness of those dents in his cheeks. Force-vision, she determines, but he’s got the same stubborn set to his jaw, the same restless energy. Still driven, still brash, still dashing. While the image doesn’t actually reveal _those_ things about Poe, Rey just has the feeling. 

That thought has her smiling to herself before she can help it. He must see, too, because the corners of his mouth tick up in mild amusement, the dimples flanking his mouth deepening even with the minimal movement. 

“What?”

She has a question poised on her tongue about young Poe, but she shakes her head instead, losing her nerve as he shifts his eyes away from her cheek to meet hers. He holds her gaze steadily, her attention effortlessly.

Rey begins to wonder what it would take to bring out the parts of him he so diligently keeps hidden away in favor of _Commander Dameron: Leader of the Resistance_ , those short-lived bits of happiness that peek through the cracks of the seriousness in him. And she feels the weight of the war on her shoulders once again. 

“All good?” She swallows thickly, taken aback by how wobbly she sounds.

“All good,” he confirms before dropping his hand, his thumb stroking over the dimple in her own cheek one final time, equal parts unconscious and affectionate. 

Needless to say, _that_ catches her off-guard as well, the ease of it, the surprising bit of tenderness in the gesture. Almost as if he’d been doing it forever. But that’s...silly, an absolutely _ridiculous_ notion.

Still, it’s hard to ignore the way air suddenly feels trapped in her lungs, along with the desire to clamp her hands over her face again, as if that alone can stop the warmth that continues to linger there. 

“I meant what I said,” he says again, repeating his thought from earlier. “Rey, I _am_ sorry, and I _do_ need you out there. I can’t do this without you. And I know your training is important, I never said it wasn’t...”

Her face pinches together in confusion and she shakes her head, the rest of his words falling away because she can only focus on one _._ “Wait... _I_?” 

“...I still stand by that, you’re the biggest chance we have of- what? You?”

“No,” she shakes her head again. “You said ‘I.’”

“I said, ‘I?’ ‘I’ what? What are you talking about?”

“You said, ‘I need-’”

“What do you mean-” Poe frowns, his forehead creasing. 

“Not ‘we need’ like from earlier-” 

He presses his lips together and he shakes his head rapidly. “I didn’t say that.”

“Yes, you did.”

Some strange, unreadable expression flits across his face. “ _No_ , I didn’t.” Poe’s voice increases in volume, taking on the same sniping tone he’d used earlier when they’d been arguing about Beebee-Ate and the Falcon. 

It raises her hackles. “Well, did you mean it or not?” She says it more fiercely than she intended, surprising the both of them.

“Mean what, my apology?” he continues in the same tone.

Rey can’t resist rolling her eyes. “What you said about needing me.”

“Of course, I meant it,” he snaps, perhaps quicker than _he_ intended because he pauses for a beat. “I- I mean, not _me_ specifically-” he stutters, beginning to shift agitatedly from foot to foot.

“You _said_ , ‘I.’” But she says the words almost casually, more intrigued by the faintest shade of pink that’s crept into his cheeks. 

“I _meant_ ‘we _-_ ’”

“But you said-”

“Should have been ‘we,’” he laughs, forced almost, sounding mildly distressed even. “Anyway, come on, we’ve gotta go. Debrief.”

He gives her a friendly, albeit awkward, pat on the shoulder and promptly brushes by her, his boots echoing on the floor of the Falcon’s floor as he leaves. Rey stands staring at his retreating form, feeling very...puzzled about the entirety of their conversation. The fleeting thought that she was wrong and that she really never will understand why all the girls on base say the things they do about Poe Dameron, chases after him.

* * *

She’d called him difficult, and maybe in a lot of ways he was. But in a lot of _other_ ways so was she. And nosy. Definitely nosy.

Poe continues without her, his cheeks burning in the wake of his slip-up, the words ringing in his ears as he makes his retreat.

_Rey, I am sorry, and I do need you..._

He rattles his head back and forth as if it will extinguish his embarrassment, but the tingling in the hand he’d used to touch her face remains. A byproduct of the Force? Or perhaps just _Rey_ ? It’s difficult to tell. The sensation is so strong that he curls his fingers into his palm -- defiantly, _stupidly_ \-- trying to hold the feeling there. 

She’d called him reckless before, too. Never to his face, but he knew she had. He squeezes his hand a little tighter, the prickles turning into a pleasant thrum. She was right to, of course. After all, he had an affinity for doing stupid things, flirting with danger. Falling for somebody in the middle of a war, for example? Definitely stupid. Falling for the last Jedi, the sole hope of the Resistance? Even he’d surprised himself with that level of foolishness. 

_Kriff, Dameron, get it together._

He sighs as the all too familiar sensation of his complicated feelings for Rey rise and crest. It’s a bittersweet ache, one he only briefly indulges in and lets squeeze at his chest because now is most definitely _not_ the time for this. 

_It’s never the time_ , he thinks, only a little bitterly. 

Still, he dutifully pushes the feelings back down into the deepest parts of his heart, hiding them away once more in all the little nooks and crannies the Jedi girl managed to worm her way into. Truthfully he knows it’s not her fault. Rey just naturally has the gravitational pull of a planet, drawing people in like moons because that’s all they ever want to be -- in her orbit.

There’s a warbling series of beeps behind him that drags him from his thoughts, the comforting roll of Beebee-Ate at his heels.

“Hey buddy,” he greets, keeping his eyes ahead, afraid the little droid will see too much and do something dumb. Like mouth off to the rest of the base. 

His loyal astromech replies with a question, one that Poe smiles softly at; he can’t help himself.

“Me and Rey?” he says, his tone equally as soft. “Yeah, buddy, we’re okay now.”

_Fin_

**Author's Note:**

> Please be gentle ^_^' and forgive me for any misinformation or characterization issues there may be, I'm still adjusting to and learning to navigate this exciting new world :) Xx


End file.
